We Saw a Chicken …

Tag: toronto

  • Tranna ain’t Bawlmer, hon (eh?)

    We just saw Hairspray. As the movie of the musical of the movie, it acquits itself quite well, but the edge of the original is lost under the sugar coating. I was about to add that we didn’t need a remake so soon after the original, but Waters’s version is 19 years old, which is an age in movie time.

    The good bits? Nikki Blonsky is a wee honey, with huge cartoony eyes and a winning smile. James Marsden adds a little extra sleaze to the role of Corny Collins. The musical numbers are infectious; but then, they should be, coming straight off the stage.

    The mediocre? Travolta’s face padding made his eyes look way too close together, and he’s no Harris Glenn Milstead. The cameos from the original are a little too cameo (didja catch Ms Lake as one of the talent scouts?), and the racist baddies are too bland to be disagreeable.

    I recognized many of the Toronto locations: the high school’s on Spadina just north of College, most of Tracy’s neighbourhood was around Roncesvalles, the TV studio looked to be on Dupont, and yes, those streetcars were old Red Rockets (one even with an Eastern Avenue destination).  If you didn’t know Baltimore, you might think it passed, but it’s nothing like the real thing.

    It’s a pretty good summer movie, charming and fluffy, but the original is still better.

  • you dig?

    Looks like they’re finding some interesting old building remains on the Shangri-La site at the corner of Simcoe & Adelaide. There are archaeologists all over it!

    (did I already say how happy I was to see the monstrous ad-scaffold gone from this site?)

  • manhunt!

    There was a full-on police manhunt in our neighbourhood last night. Between about 3:30-4am, a police car vroomed and screeched round the streets with its lights off. Maybe it was a manhunt, or maybe they just had their Starsky & Hutch on.

  • oh no, wait, this is even more moronic

    I was mildly incensed to see an ad truck tootling about downtown. What was even worse was that it advertised cleanourair.com, a site purporting to help individuals reduce their carbon footprint.

    Get this: the founding sponsor of the site is VisionAdz, a company whose sole purpose is to have ad trucks tootling about downtown, polluting our air and my eyes.

    Bill Hicks was right about advertising types.

  • i wish i had my camera with me

    The semi-skilled busker with the snoozing-in-the-guitar-case spaniel was performing at Osgoode tonight.

  • Keep September 25th Clear …

    ‘cos Thomas Dolby’s playing The Mod Club.

  • injera frenzy

    Catherine and I just had lunch at Queen of Sheba on Bloor just east of Dufferin. It was good; gentle spices and tons of flat bread to eat the meat and sauces with.

    I can’t believe I have never had Ethiopian food before. I shall remedy that soon.

  • pee-yew

    There is a very bad smell blowing into Union Station from the east. It has a kind of burning manure tang to it.

  • i think not

    Barr’s Irn Bru Irish? Surely not, but that’s what Dominion thinks:

    barr’s irn bru is not irish

  • flying sucks

    Flying – especially to the US – is such a tawdry experience. You trail out to a part of town that noone would otherwise go to, you wait in line, ticketing systems malfunction in ways that airline staff accept blindly, you wait in line again, a bored immigration official grills you half-heartedly, you wait in line again (this time without shoes), then you look forward to some dinner in the departure lounge – and have to make do with some cardboard pizza, since the only other choice is a hockey bar. And all of this is a good 90 minutes from your departure time.

    Why does anyone put up with this?

  • orange

    curious_orange-roncesvalles.jpg

    massed roadworks lights on Roncesvalles

  • Casper and the Cookies Live at the Tranzac, 2007-05-03

    I’ve uploaded Casper and the Cookies Live at Tranzac on 2007-05-03 to archive.org. Doesn’t look as if mp3 conversion is working yet, so I guess I’ll do that for now.

    Update: streaming tracklists – XSPF :: M3U

  • Tim’s Discourse (in which soup nearly comes down Stewart’s nose)

    Grabbed a Tim’s lunch today, and glad I sat in, otherwise I would have missed the following:

    One: I heard this astrologer say the science shows …
    Two: Astrology’s not a science!
    One: Okay, well, but he says a lot of professors agree with him, and he’s got scientists working for him, and he says you can predict things.
    Two: What sort of things?
    One: Well, he said that on 9/11, Saturn and Mars were aligned with Uranus …
    Two: Wasn’t my anus!

    (I think they may have been discussing Richard Tarnas, who was on CBC last night.)

  • oh noes!

    Ghali Kitchen – home of the unbelievable Rasta Pasta – is no longer on Queen West. Seems like they went back to their roots at Queen E and Greenwood.

    They shall be missed, though my cholesterol level will stay sane.

  • my guitar teacher can climb through a tennis racquet, yours can’t

    I went to The Friendly Rich Show for the first time last night, and my mind capsized completely. I’d seen Friendly Rich & The Lollipop People before, but never as their full-on, prank-calling, burlesque-puppeting avant-cabaret show.

    The Lollipop People are incredibly tight as a band, which must be hard when you’ve got a harpsichord, a bassoon, a full concert harp, and a banjo (binga-banga in Rich-speak) in the mix. I put it down to skilled musicians having fun, and Rich’s excellent direction.

    The show is run by Soot, the almost wordless but entirely malicious stage manager. He grumbles his way from musical number, to animal trick show, to song, to prank call. Last night’s call was to order pizza from Pizza Pizza, and they didn’t take it too well. Nichol S. Robertson did indeed climb through a tennis racquet.

    Last night’s  show was a little different, in that they performed Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition (complete with Hammond and turntables). What was a lot more different was, while they were playing, a naked man in a wild man mask set fire to his, um, self. That’s gotta smart.

    They’re playing again at the Tranzac on the last Friday of June. You should be there. It’s exactly like nothing else!

  • I think I’ve found it …

    Batavus Personal Bike

    I was at the Dutch Bike festival last weekend, and I think I found the Sensible Bicycle. Curbside were showing the Batavus Personal Bike. It’s lovely. At $1400 for the 3-speed, though, I’m not just about to trade in the old Stumpjumper.

    I’m not wild about the squidgy roller brakes, and the dynamo really should’ve been built into the hub, but these are very minor things. Wonder if the company would let me expense this instead of getting a transit pass?

  • my neighbourhood, according to CanVec

    my neighbourhood, according to CanVec and QGIS

    Canada has recently released most of its geodata for free – Go Canada! I was particularly interested in CanVec, the large vector topographical set. I downloaded the set for Toronto and environs, and slapped it into QGIS. With nearly all the layers on, my neighbourhood looks like the above.

    I didn’t find any labels, or much in the way of documentation for this huge data set. It would be a shame if good metadata weren’t available, for it adds real utility to the map data.

  • Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 02007

    Ned Hanlan

    My Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 02007 gallery for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.I made an f/90 pinhole lens for the D70 today. Results are not bad. True pinhole freaks will decry the fact that I could just sight through the SLR viewfinder, so all of the images are uncropped.

    I also took a roll on my Zero 2000 120 rollfilm pinhole camera. I have to take the film into Toronto Image Works to see the results.

    Man, but do pinhole lenses resolve the grot on your DSLR sensor!

  • wheeee!

    Dawes Super Galaxy at Main St Station

    I got the Super Galaxy back from Cogs yesterday. They’ve done a great job of fitting slightly raised bars and thumbshifters, and repacking all the ancient bearings. It rides like a dream; I was only planning to ride from Gerrard back to Broadview TTC, but I zoomed all the way along Gerrard to Main St station. And this was me having hardly been on a bike since last year.

    I think the rear derailleur may be on its way out, ‘cos it still makes clonky noises in lowest gear. But it’s looking great, and running great, and best of all, Cogs did the work for a very reasonable price. I am happy.

  • my favourite sign slogan

    slippery trip hazard

    Sign at Riverdale Library: Slippery trip hazard.